Quality of Care and Mortality among Long-term Care
Residents with Dementia

R. Colin Reid

Abstract

Seniors with dementia who enter long-term care facilities are at greater risk of
death than are similar individuals that remain in the community. Previous
research has focused primarily on social selection factors such as health status to explain mortality in this population. This study seeks to determine whether
resident mortality within 12 months of admission to a facility can be explained
by post-admission social causative factors, that is, by institutional quality of
care. Logistic regression results are based on the study of 402 residents in 73
long-term care facilities throughout British Columbia, Canada. Mortality data
were obtained from Vital Statistics. Although social selection factors (e.g.,
physical dependency) emerge as the strongest predictors, one social causative
factor – facility level restraint use – also predicts mortality. This study provides
some evidence that social causative factors play a role in determining mortality among long-term care residents with dementia. Further research on the social causative factors is needed to understand the degree to which they affect mortality, and the way in which they do so.